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Where 

Louisville 

Started 



WRITTEN BY 
CAPT. ALFRED PIRTLE, 

n 

Secretary Filson Club and Author "Life of Admiral 
Jouett" and "The Battle of Tippecanoe." 



1910 





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The winter of 1777 was on, and Maj. George Rogers Clark, of the 
Virginia troops, traveled from Kentucky to Richmond, Va., to use his 
influence with Gov. Patrick Henry for the benefit of the new country 
and its people away out beyond the mountains. He told Gov. Henry of 
their want of protection from the Indians of north of the Ohio, and laid 
before him the plans he (Clark) had thoroughly thought out, that the 
best method of protecting the infant settlement was by attacking the 
British of Detroit, Vincennes and Kaskaskia, where lay the sources, of 
the Indian depredations. In addition to this point he pictured to the 
Governor, the value such an attack on the possessions and forces of the 
British would be, in the grand campaign to be waged during the coming 
\ car. Some months passed in preparation of the expedition, which had 
the full endorsement of Gov. Henry and the Military Committee. 

The men were enrolled, equipped and assembled at Redstone on the 
Monongahela River (now called Brownsville, Pa.) during the spring of 
L778, and Clark, promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, floated down to Fort 
Pitt, now Pittsburg, where the expedition completed its stores and 
ammunition" and started down the Ohio, early in the month of May, hav- 
ing something like eight}- settlers traveling under the protection of the 
military part of the expedition. Moving slowly, camping on the shore at 
night, the Meet was moored to the trees on the shores of an island at the 
head of the Falls of the Ohio, May 27th, 1778. 

Clark remained on this island some weeks, while the soldiers cleared 
a part of the trees away, made a stockade and cabins for the settlers to 
occupy, erected some store rooms to protect the military supplies which 
he left under the guard of ten men ; and the large body of men, over 125, 
made short work, of the above mentioned improvements. The settlers 
planted a crop of corn on the island, which gave the name by which it 
has since been known in history, (Corn Island), but it has long since 
been swept away by the Ohio. 

During an eclipse of the Sun, Lieutenant Colonel Clark with the 
main body of troops left the Falls of the Ohio, June 24, and in row 
boats proceeded rapidly down the Ohio, until he came to the ruins of 



Ft. Massac, about 40 miles from the mouth of the Ohio, where he 
landed, and from there marched overland, and in the early part of July 
captured Kaskaskia and the other polsts on the east bank of the 
Mississippi. It is nut the intention in this sketch to give any account 
of this most remarkable man's extraordinary achievements on this 
campaign, but remember when you think of it, that Clark was not 
twenty-six years of age until the following November. 

He did not forget his little band of people on the island at the Falls 
of the Ohio, for he sent them orders, by two messengers, (one was Simon 
Kenton) who reached there in September, on their way to Richmond, Va., 
with despatches for Gov. Henry, that they were to remove to the 
Mainland on the Kentucky shore and build a wooden fort and cabins in 
which to pass the next winter. 

The hand of man had not then been laid upon the rocks and islands 
in the river, and the bottom of the river was laid bare in the season of 
low water, between Corn Island and the Kentucky shore and the people 
could move across without impediment. The woods gave them fuel, 
and food, from the game, which roamed in their depths. Water 
from a spring near at hand was a requisite, and this was found at the foot 
of the second bank of the river, and the site of the first fort was selected 
not far from this spring, which within the memory of the writer supplied 
a brewery, directly at the foot of 12th Street. 

The building of the fort was done by the soldiers left by Clark, and 
the men of the little body of settlers under the direction of Richard 
Chenoweth, a housebuilder, who had brought his wife and children 
with him to make a home in the wilderness. 

The bank of the river where they decided to place themselves, was 
a little higher than the ground now is and the location gave a view up 
and down the river for miles. 

George Rogers Clark had been well educated in Virginia, his native 
State, was a good surveyor and made a clear map drawn to a scale of 
the young settlement in 1779, and the map, shows that the first set- 
tlement in Louisville was on the spot now occupied by the Conrad 
Shoe Co., on the South side of Rowan Street, about one hundred 
feet East of Twelfth Street. A few years ago the Filson Club appointed 
Col. R. T. Durrett, Mr. Donald McDonald, Miss Barlow, Mrs. Sallie 
Marshall Hardy, and Alfred Pirtle to make a personal inspection of 
the ground, and to locate the exact position of the first fort in Louisville. 



RFP 



With the map in hand it was not at all difficult to reach the conclusion 
given above, that the fort was situated as slated in the preceding para- 
graph. 

The trees were cut down and removed from sufficient space to erect 
a stockade and cabins to enclose a space approximating two hun- 
dred feet long", by one hundred wide. Block houses were built at the 
four corners, while eight cabins on each long side, which ran North 
and South, and four on each end. East and West, and the stockades be- 
tween the cabins formed the enclosure, the cabins being with their backs 
to the outside and their doors opening on the "parade" as it came to be 
called. The block houses were two stories high, with the second story 
overhanging the lower ( ceo "-extra ' noteoj) so that no enemy could get 
under the stockade in day light without being seen. The roofs of the 
cabins and block houses sloped to the inside of the fort. The main gate 
was near the northwest block house. All the brush was cleared away 
some hundred yards from the fort and afterwards the trees were cut 
down as the timber was needed. 

The fort was habitable in December, and the first Christmas party 
in Louisville was given December 24, 25, Ills, in the northeast block 
house, which Richard Chenoweth finished in time for the great feast 
that was the principal part of the evening except the dancing by music 
furnished by Cato, the darkey fiddler of the settlement. 

There is no question of the locality of the fort, for Col. Clark re- 
turned to Louisville, after his capture of Vincennes and made his head- 
quarters there, while he built a larger and permanent fort at the foot of 
Seventh Street on Main Street in 1782. 

Clark was a civil engineer and evidently saw the high water mark on 
the shore, hence his requiring the removal of the settlement from the 
island to the mainland before winter set in so the}' would be safely 
housed before an early spring flood. 

To construct the fort as directed by Lieutenant Colonel Clark, the 
site was first selected and marked out by clearing the small trees and 
under brush from the outlines of the space that was to be enclosed. 
Then the trees within the area were cut down, the limbs trimmed off 
and the trunks made into logs of the proper length, either for making the 
1 lock houses, the log cabins, the stockade, gates, doors, floors and roof^. 
Such wood as remained was chopped into pieces for firewood. 

The tools mostly used by the pioneers were axes, saws and augers. 



With an ax only a man skilled in handling it could get from the tree as it 
lay almost any part of the building he needed, that is, the logs that were 
to make the walls and windows, the flat pieces that were used for the 
floor, and the split pieces (clapboards) to go upon the rafters and make 
the roof. Pins trimmed from the smaller pieces, to take the place of 
bolts or nails, were used to fasten the various parts of the building 
together. Having raised the house to the proper height, the rafters, 
split out of young trees, were placed on the walls and made secure at the 
proper angle to throw off the rain and snow, and instead of nails driven 
into each clapboard that made the roof, long timbers were laid length- 
wise of the roof; on these clapboards were laid, and on them, other long 
pieces were placed in which holes were bored and long wooden pins 
driven in so as to hold the two long pieces and the clapboards all 
together. 

The doors, of straight grained wood, split and smoothed with the 
ax, were hung on wooden hinges, fastened by wooden pins to a wooden 
frame. A large latch, also of wood, dropped into a wooden catch on the 
door frame inside the cabin. Above the latch was a hole in the door, 
through which the latch string hung down on the outside so that the 
latch could be raised from without, and a sign that one must knock or 
ask to be admitted was made by taking the latch string inside. Hence 
the saying "Hang the latch string out" as a sign of hospitable welcome. 
The windows had no glass for many years after the settlement of the 
State, but there were wooden shutters hung to close very much the same 
as the doors, except the latch was not used, but a hole was bored in a 
log or part of the frame, at an angle that would admit a piece of wood 
to be placed, so as to keep the shutter firmly closed against wind or 
against an enemy. The fire place was large, deep and ample in every 
way, for wood cost nothing except labor, and a fire burned all the time 
for light or cooking. AYhere stone was near, the chimney was built 
of it, or if it was scarce or difficult to get, the walls of the chimney 
were made of sticks of wood laid upon each other with a thick coat 
of mud between, and a liberal application of it on the inside where 
it soon baked hard. But there were chimneys that took fire, yet it 
was seldom, and many a cabin escaped entirely. 

As the fort was building the space to lie occupied by each cabin was 
laid off, and that space between them was to be filled with a stockade. 
The timber for this was taken from small trees, cut to about fifteen feet 



long and split down the center. One end of each piece was sharpened 
with the ax so that the pieces of timber when placed on end and so 
close together that there were no places for a bullet to go through, formed 
an cd^e like a saw. To put the stockade in place a trench was dug deep 
enough to put the timbers three feet, at least, in the ground thus making 
them too high for a man to scale unless with the help 
of a ladder of some kind. The earth was rammed tight around 
the stockade, and in a few months it was perfectly firm. These pieces 
of wood were selected with care so as not to have any places where 
bullets could get through, be heavy enough to turn the bullets or stroke 
of a tomahawk if thrown against it; in fact, resist anything but the 
fire of cannons. 

In 1782 01ark, promoted to Brig. General, built the second fort, named 
Fort Nelson for the Governor of Virginia, at Seventh Street and the 
river, which he made more substantial than the first fort. 




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